Why are government officials more protected against legal consequences for their actions?

From time to time you may read or hear of a news story, where a citizen was somehow mistreated by governmental officials or the police, the citizen sued and won the case, and got compensation (or, for example, was reinstated if the injustice was firing him from his position, or similar.) Likewise in many countries, very prominently in the United States, it's pretty much a daily occurrence that someone gets charged by the police, and the charges are then dropped and the case dismissed in court because of no legal basis to the charges.

What you extremely rarely, if ever, hear in these situations is legal consequences to the government officials who committed the (often illegal) injustice towards the citizen.

An overzealous far-leftist city council, or governmental institution, or state-funded school or university, or any of the other myriads of government-run or government-funded institutions, may for example fire an employee who they disagree with politically. If the firing was clearly unjustified and illegal, the employee can sue in most countries, and get his job reinstated (or, at a minimum, get some compensation). Even the United States (which as notoriously few legal protections for employees) offers some recourse to such employees working for governmental institutions.

Yet, whenever that happens, even when the court judges that the firing was outright illegal, have you ever heard of legal consequences for those responsible for it? I haven't.

Likewise, and particularly in the United States (and some other countries), the cops love the tactic of "slap citizens, particularly drivers, with random fines and charges, and let the courts figure it out. Not my problem." They do this because, indeed, police officers are pretty much immune from any legal consequences, or other kind of consequences, no matter how frivolous the fines or charges were. And this is not just in the United States: It's the same in most other countries as well.

You can see that all the time, in many countries: Cops issue a fine, or even charge someone with something frivolous, the courts dismiss the case... and absolutely nothing happens to the cops. No consequences whatsoever.

Why are government officials more protected than legal citizens when it comes to their legally dubious and even illegal actions? They often get away with clear violations of the law that no regular citizen could get away with.

It's completely backwards: Those in power should be held more responsible than those who are not in any position of power. Yet, in practice it's the exact opposite: Those in power are less responsible for their actions, and more protected against legal consequences. The threshold at which there are actual legal consequences is much, much higher for government officials than for regular citizens.

That's just not how it should be. With a position of power there should be stricter standards, not more lenient ones.